Cho Chul-hyun

Cho was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in February 2026 and received treatment for about eight months. He died at around 1am on 8 October 2026, aged 67, according to his family and the film industry. The news was first reported by Ilgan Sports and carried by Yonhap, YTN, Chosun Biz, Sports Chosun and other outlets. His death came the day before Hangul Day, the holiday marking the creation of the alphabet that was the subject of his only film as director.

A wake was held in room 303 of the funeral hall at Korea University Anam Hospital in Seoul. The encoffining was set for 3pm on 9 October and the funeral procession for 7am on 10 October, with burial at Seoul Memorial Park.

Cho Chul-hyun (Korean: 조철현, hanja: 曺喆鉉, also romanised Jo Chul-hyun and Cho Cheol-hyeon) was born on 12 May 1959, according to the film magazine Cine21. Little has been published about his childhood or schooling. He said in later life that he had been influenced by Buddhism from a young age, which gave him a lasting interest in Buddhist subjects in Korean history.

Cho joined the Korea Film Distribution company in 1987, according to the Korean Movie Database run by the Korean Film Archive. There he learned the business from the ground up, working on film imports, publicity, advertising, translation and production management. His early work included publicity for the 1987 film Woman in Crisis and around 20 foreign films, and over the following years he wrote the Korean subtitles for about 600 foreign films. He later headed Tiger Pictures, a company that both imported foreign films, such as Seven Swords and Crash, and produced Korean ones.

From the late 1990s he worked as a planner, producer and writer. His credits include The Spy (1999), Anarchists (2000), Hi! Dharma! (2001), Hi! Dharma 2: Showdown in Seoul (2004), Happy Life (2007) and Sunny (2008). While planning Hi! Dharma!, a comedy set in a Buddhist temple, he toured temples across the country and stayed for several months at Eunhasa temple in Gimhae, where the film was shot.

With the director Lee Joon-ik and the producer Jung Seung-hye, who died in 2009, he formed what the Korean film world called a planning troika, the three being compared to Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, the sworn brothers of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. With Lee he made a series of historical films, contributing to the production, planning or screenplays of Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (2003), Blades of Blood (2010) and Battlefield Heroes (2011). He also wrote the screenplay of The Throne (2015), starring Song Kang-ho and Yoo Ah-in, which won him the screenplay award at the 35th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, the 2nd Korea Film Producers Association Awards and the 21st Chunsa Film Art Awards.

After years of researching the creation of the Korean alphabet, he made his debut as director at the age of 60 with The King's Letters (2019), which he also wrote. The film told the story of King Sejong, played by Song Kang-ho, creating Hunminjeongeum with the help of the Buddhist monk Shinmi, played by Park Hae-il, and Queen Soheon, played by Jeon Mi-seon. Cho based it on one of several theories about the origins of Hangul, one that links it to Sanskrit, and opened the film with a caption saying it dramatised one such theory. On release it was criticised for giving a monk, rather than the scholars of the Hall of Worthies, the leading role, and it drew about 960,000 cinemagoers. Cho said he had no wish to belittle Sejong and had wanted to show the greatness of the king and the anguish behind the alphabet's creation. Jeon Mi-seon, who died in June 2019 before the release, was posthumously named best supporting actress at the 2019 Korea Film Producers Association Awards. More recently Cho planned and wrote a project titled Mongyudowondo.

Cho was known in the industry as an avid reader, and colleagues described him as weighty, unpretentious and perceptive, one of the seniors most respected by younger filmmakers. His interest in Buddhism ran through his work, from Hi! Dharma! to The King's Letters. In July 2020 he spoke at a book concert at Yeoyeo Temple in Gimhae alongside Jeong Jin-won, the Dongguk University professor who had advised on the film, saying that Sejong's greatness lay not only in the result, Hangul, but in a creation process that overcame many difficulties.

Cho's career spanned almost every part of the film business, from subtitling and marketing foreign releases to planning, producing, writing and finally directing. Ilgan Sports called him a great tree of Chungmuro, the Seoul district long synonymous with Korean cinema. His long partnership with Lee Joon-ik produced several of the historical films that revived the Korean period drama, and The Throne brought him the main screenplay prizes of 2015. The King's Letters, though divided in its reception, drew renewed attention to the monk Shinmi and prompted debate about the role of Buddhism in the history of Hangul.